Monday, July 02, 2007

Formula One..

Always been fascinated by these 19000+ RPM monsters who rip the racetracks and burn rubber as if its like gulping cold water on a lethally hot day! Here are a few interesting facts I came across...No wonder their specifications are rightly titled "Formula One"

An F1 car is made up of 80,000 components, if it were assembled 99.9%correctly, it would still start the race with 80 things wrong!

When an F1 driver hits the brakes on his car he experiences retardation or deceleration comparable to a regular car driving through a BRICK wall at 300kmph!!!

F1 car can go from 0 to 160 kph AND back to 0 in FOUR seconds!!!!!!!

F1 car engines last only for about 2 hours of racing mostly before blowing up on the other hand we expect our engines to last us for a decent 20yrs on an average and they quite faithfully DO....that's the extent to which the engines aer pushed to perform...

An average F1 driver looses about 4kgs of weight after just one race due to the prolonged exposure to high G forces and temperatures for little over an hour.

At 550kg a F1 car is less than half the weight of a Mini.

To give you an idea of just how important aerodynamic design and added down force can be,small planes can take off at slower speeds than F1 cars travel on the track.

Without aerodynamic down force, high-performance racing cars have sufficient power to produce wheel spin and loss of control at 160 kph. They usually race at over 300 kph.

In a street course race like the Monaco Grand Prix, the down force provides enough suction to lift manhole covers. Before the race all of the manhole covers on the streets have to be welded down to prevent this from happening!

The re fuelers used in F1 can supply 12 litres of fuel per second. This means it would take just 4 seconds to fill the tank of an average 50 liter family car. They use the same refueling rigs used on US military helicopters today.

Ã TOP F1 pit crew team can refuel and change tyres in around 3 seconds. It took me more than that for sure to read the previous point

During the race the tyres lose weight! Each tyre loses about 0.5 kg in weight due to wear.

A dry-weather F1 tyre reaches peak operating performance (best grip) when tread temperature is between 900C and 1200C.(Water boils boils at 100C remember) At top speed, F1 tyres rotate 50 times a second.

An F1 car's engine is designed to perform at 19,000 RPM. The interesting fact is that its an FIA regulation which restricts automobile manufacturers to go beyond that. So imagine, if the ban were lifted, how far beyond the revs could go..

To think of it, these have been designed by humans in flesh and blood. Looking back, i keep gibbering about Perception and Reality. I guess F1 proves that if it can be perceived, its only a matter of time and space before it's transition to reality!